A Poet Reflects

An Afternoon

As he writes, without looking at the sea,
he feels the tip of his pen begin to tremble.
The tide is going out across the shingle.
But it isn’t that.  No,
it’s because at that moment she chooses
to walk into the room without any clothes on.
Drowsy, not even sure where she is
for a moment.  She waves the hair from her forehead.
Sits on the toilet with her eyes closed,
head down.  Legs sprawled.  He sees her
through the doorway.  Maybe
she’s remembering what happened that morning.
For after a time, she opens one eye and looks at him.
And sweetly smiles.

—Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998)

Hummingbird

For Tess

Suppose I say summer,
write the word “hummingbird,”
put it in an envelope,
take it down the hill
to the box.  When you open
my letter you will recall
those days and how much,
just how much, I love you.

—Raymond Carver, from All of Us: The Collected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 1998)

I give you what is unbounded, passing from dark to dark,
containing darkness: a night of rain, an early morning.
I give you the life I have let live for love of you:
a clump of orange-blooming weeds beside the road,
the young orchard waiting in the snow, our own life
that we have planted in this ground, as I
have planted mine in you.  I give you my love for all
beautiful and honest women that you gather to yourself
again and again, and satisfy—and this poem,
no more mine than any man’s who has loved a woman.

—Wendell Berry, section 7 of “The Country of Marriage” from New Collected Poems (Counter Point, 2012)

 … Always nervous, even
after a good sleep I’d like
to climb back into.  The sun
shines on yesterday’s new-
fallen snow and yestereven
it turned the world to pink
and rose and steel-blue
buildings.  [My love] is restless:
leaving soon.  And what then
will I do with myself?  Some-
one is watching morning
TV.  I’m not reduced to that
yet.  I wish one could press
snowflakes in a book like flowers.

—James Schuyler, from “February 13, 1975” in Selected Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1988)

Sometimes you love someone
so much you have to leave them
alone with their memories of
how love’s become whatever
it is & leave it at that, leave
it left in order to leaf it &
flutter in the wind the way leaves
leave trees & like trees leave
leaves; mute like light in a
rakish, unsorted sort of way …

sometimes you love someone
so much you have to leave them loved.

—Al Young, from “Winter Leaves” in Heaven: Collected Poems 1956-1990 (Creative Arts Book Company, 1992)

I walk back and forth in my room … 

I walk back and forth in my room.
shaking my arms and legs,
trying to shake the love out.

But it won’t go.  One cockeyed trillium, endangered
member of the lily family,
watches me from the windowsill—

oh silly [one], she’s saying,
you plucked me
when you knew it was wrong:

did you expect no ramifications?

—Jan Heller Levi, from Once I Gazed at You in Wonder (Louisiana State University Press, 1999)

Daylight

And when I thought,
“Our love might end”
the sun
went right on shining.

—James Schuyler, from Collected Poems (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1995)

forgetlings:

Du warst mein Tod:
dich konnte ich halten,
während mir alles entfiel.

— Paul Celan

translation:

You were my death:
you I could hold
while everything slipped away.

translated from the German by Daniel Stephensen

(via dovegreymornings-deactivated201)

elina-astra:

if one day

you do not see the sun over the horizon,
know, I waited for you too long

and when you glare at the lonely boat in the sea,
know, this is my soul, floating away

and when you hear the desperate seagulls cry,
know, it will be my last good-bye

and when you find a white lily with a heart
know, I could never love you more

and when you are touched by the flowing sand,
know, this is me, walking by the land

but if one day, you remember me with sadness,
know, it was only a dream, still in you

—Zoya Gardo